huckamania writes: The Climatic Research Unit is widely recognised as one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. Consisting of a staff of around thirty research scientists and students, the Unit has developed a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, including the global temperature record used to monitor the state of the climate system, as well as statistical software packages and climate models.

An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today:

"We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents"

The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files. It contained data, code, and emails apparently from the CRU. If proved legitimate, these bombshells could spell trouble for the AGW crowd.

Or at least Global Warming shouldn't be a debate. It's extremely visible in tropical climates where already meager crops are failing and entire coastal regions are flooding, and it's visible further north where the ice cap is shrinking at an unprecedented rate. Maybe it's easier to ignore when you live in temperate regions with AC and central heating, but all of the data is still there for anyone that cares to look. I don't understand the accusations that it's faked at all - what does this supposed conspira

Or at least Global Warming shouldn't be a debate. It's extremely visible in tropical climates where already meager crops are failing and entire coastal regions are flooding,

Perhaps you should email CRU and point out all this warming that they seem to have missed. From one of the leaked emails :

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate

That from Kevin Trenberth to Michael Mann.

and it's visible further north where the ice cap is shrinking at an unprecedented rate.

You do realise that the summer minimum sea ice extent has been increasing for the past two years, don't you?

Maybe it's easier to ignore when you live in temperate regions with AC and central heating, but all of the data is still there for anyone that cares to look. I don't understand the accusations that it's faked at all - what does this supposed conspiracy inflating global warming stats hope to gain by inventing it?

Have you read the draft of the Copenhagen docs to be discussed? Industrial nations will be required to give 0.7% of their GDP to the UN to disperse (minus handling charges, naturally) to struggling countries like, say, China.